


Bootlaces

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-10
Updated: 2008-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-03 20:37:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John doesn't recognise the first time as a kiss until much later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bootlaces

**Author's Note:**

> For Chandri, with thanks to Jenn for betaing.

John doesn't recognise the first time as a kiss until much later—doesn't know it for what it is because the two of them are pressed close together in a thin cleft that weather and time have succeeded in splitting into the dark rock. Both of them are trembling, blood laced with the quicksilver drug that is adrenaline: straining to hear the sounds of Therkassian troops moving closer, waiting for the signal from Teyla which will tell them to make their move. John's got his P90 clasped tightly in his hands, aware of the sweat trickling down his back and making his t-shirt cling uncomfortably to his back; one of Rodney's feet is twisted on top of his, and neither of them can afford to say anything, though out of the corner of his eye, John can see Rodney's mouth quivering.

_Not from nerves_, John remembers thinking — Rodney's been in the thick of something like this too many times now. He remembers thinking, _got this down pretty well now_, when scree skitters down the mountainside opposite and they know Teyla must be ready with the big guns. _Got this down well enough_, when they move out together, a synchronised break out of the rock that lets them get the drop on the Therkassians—and Rodney's been pressed so close to him, his presence so known and so trusted, that nothing in John questions the way Rodney's head turns just before they begin; the way Rodney's breath warms his neck and his lips brush against John's skin—inconsequential, because at the time, John doesn't know what it means.

There's too much to factor in, and not enough time. Never enough time in something like this: John's seen civil wars before, fought through them and flown over them; walked over the rubble of the ugliness that had turned sibling against sibling, friend against friend; learned how you can always see what's coming, but never have enough time to stop it. Never a way to get out once you've walked into it, and they'd sauntered in here: landed right in the middle of isolationism versus free access to the gate, urban Therkassia against its rural hinterland, hostilities sparked distantly by Lantean actions a couple of light years away and brought back to them here and now.

John runs, feeling the air burn in his lungs as he reaches the halfway point, Rodney keeping pace at his side and a platoon of Free Therkassian soldiers gaining on them. He lets loose with a grenade, flinging it over his shoulder to land where it may, making the ground shake beneath their feet while the world explodes in a shower of black dust, hears Rodney yell, and John's bought them some time—they're both coughing, but still running. Ahead of them, Teyla's laying down fire, one P90 firing from each hand, keeping away the troops that are coming from right and left until one of them can get back to her and help her get the jumper up.

Fifty paces to go, then forty, and John can see how Teyla's mouth shapes his name, can hear the welcome sound of arriving back-up as jumpers swoop in overhead, just at the moment the blade slides into his back. He grunts, surprised—he'd thought he was ahead—and then he's stumbling, going down. John remembers thinking that the rocky floor of the valley is surprisingly warm in the late afternoon sun—remembers thinking _he'll trip_ when he sees Rodney's boots step into view, his untied bootlaces. Rodney is standing over him, swearing viciously and shooting at someone John can't see, over and over.

****

"Lucky," Keller murmurs at him when he blinks awake properly for the first time; even through the haze of morphine, lucky is not what John feels like.

"You try havin' knife in y'back," he grumbles at her with a tongue that feels as though it's been made of thick, padded cotton.

Keller smiles at his ill-humour with the ease of a doctor who's seen it all before, brushes the sweaty tangle of his hair back from his face, and says simply, "It missed your spine, left only a minor nick on your kidney which was relatively simple to repair. You'll be sore for a while, and you're not going to be on active duty for even longer, but you'll be fine."

John snorts—how many times has he heard that before?—then makes himself focus enough to ask the important question. "Team?"

"When you're fully lucid," Keller says wryly, straightening his pillow, "I want you to tell Ronon exactly why trying to run on a busted knee is a bad idea."

John takes that to mean they're all okay, and he feels himself let go of a strain he hadn't even known he was carrying, locked into muscle and immovable bone despite all the stuff Keller's been pumping into his system—his back and shoulders relax suddenly, and he lets himself sink back into the pillows.

"Now I want you to get some rest. I mean it!" she says when he tries to protest, aiming for threatening and surprising John by reaching it. "Any attempt to get out of bed, and Colonel Carter says I'm authorised to lock you up in isolation—without your DS Lite."

John tries his best not to pout, but he's tired and in pain and Keller, quite frankly, can be mean when she wants to be.

"Okay," he huffs, irritation making a sing-song of his syllables, and Keller favours him with an approving smile before she pulls the privacy screens back from around his bed. She knows without having to be told that John is incapable of sleep with them drawn closed around him. He fights sleep still, looks around the infirmary with aching eyes to reassure himself with its morning bustle, its familiar rhythms—sees Teyla fast asleep in a nearby bed; sees Ronon sitting in a wheelchair, one leg stretched out in front of him, bickering loudly enough with Keller that John knows they must be back on again; sees Rodney pulling up a chair to sit next to him.

John tries to smile at him, but he doesn't know if he quite manages it—he has to blink to bring Rodney into focus, to see the dark circles under Rodney's eyes, the sharp edge of stubble on his jaw—and the hand that Rodney slips into his is cool and callused.

"Don't," Rodney says, his voice tight and choked, "Don't do that again. Please."

John blinks up at him, because there's something he's not quite getting here. Rodney sounds angry, but not with him, and that's a new one; suggestions flit through his mind, whispers of things that might be, but he's not got the ability to grasp at them right now. He settles instead for confiding in Rodney something that's been bothering him since he closed his eyes back on Therkassia.

"Y'should tie your bootlaces better," he says, very seriously, giving his words all the weight he knows they deserve. "Trip. Hurt y'self."

Rodney blinks down at him for a moment, eyes wide and startled into a darker blue, before he starts yelling something at Keller about overdoing the morphine. John grins, comforted by the familiar sound of Rodney losing his shit over something nonsensical, and falls asleep with Rodney's hand still clasped in his—thinks he remembers when Rodney finally left, somewhere near midnight; how Rodney had pressed a careful kiss to the crease of John's lifeline before he'd let go.

****

His recovery is slow. Recovery is always slower than John would like, but this time it's enough to make even Keller worry. The wound gets infected, skin puckering red and angry between the stitches, and she has to use one of the Ancient healing devices on him—grudgingly, because ten thousand year old medical equipment designed for subtly different anatomies is always going to be unpredictable; with a flush to her cheeks because, as Keller confides in him, she feels a little silly waving something that looks like a sparkly table tennis paddle over his body.

It works, but the cure is nearly worse than the infection for tiring him out. Makes him feel like he's aged beyond the signs of strain he sees when he looks in the mirror—couple more streaks of grey in his hair, silver in his stubble, crow's feet flexing around his eyes when he squints at himself—and when Keller lets him out of the infirmary, he goes to the mess. It's well past dinner time, and he's not normally one for coffee much past lunch, but he heads straight for the flasks of coffee the cooks have left out.

He won't be able to sleep tonight, but John doesn't want to—he's seen enough of the insides of his own eyelids lately—so he snags a mug, and the last flask, and makes his way over to one of the big tables on the outdoor balcony. Out here, he can hear the boom and crash of the waves a couple hundred feet below him, smell the crisp bite of salt in the wind, feel himself soothed by his city around him. John kicks off his shoes under the table and lets Atlantis' warmth soak into him through the heated stone of the floor. He sits and drinks the dark, syrupy coffee with one eye on the dimming horizon, and one on the battered paperback in front of him (_Middlemarch_, its back cover long since lost and its front tattered and frayed).

Rodney finds him about thirty minutes and a chapter and a half in, his up-tilted nose following the scent of coffee. He must have been truly caffeine deprived, because he pours and drinks a full two cups before he starts to berate John for having the temerity to requisition a valuable public resource.

"And by valuable public resource, you mean?"

Rodney sniffs, sits down next to him. "Caffeine withdrawal is not a pleasant thing to experience."

"Or to watch," John drawls, snickering at the way that makes Rodney's cheeks heat. He pushes the rest of the flask along the table to him. "Addict."

"I prefer to term it—"

John presses the side of one foot against Rodney's under the table.

"Okay," Rodney sighs with an air of elaborate weariness. "Fine. Addict it is."

There's silence for a moment while Rodney drinks. John makes it to the end of the chapter, resisting all the way the urge to reach into the book and shake Dorothea for being an idiot. Then Rodney's earpiece clicks on, and someone squawks with staticky hysteria in Rodney's ear, loud enough to make John jump and Rodney roll his eyes.

"You—_what_?"

Another frantic burst of noise, and Rodney solemnly tells whoever's on the other end that if they manage to survive the next sixty minutes, he is personally going to review their college transcripts for discrepancies because there is no way, no _way_, that they should have so much as a piece of scrawled-upon toilet paper from a two-bit community college.

John sits and watches, sipping his coffee, because there is a kind of entertainment to be garnered from watching Rodney rip someone a new one, then arches an eyebrow when Rodney clicks his radio off and pushes his chair back to stand up.

"Want backup, buddy?" he says. He's learned to never underestimate how useful a gun can turn out to be at eight o'clock on a Sunday evening.

Rodney shakes his head. "No, no, no, it's not the end of the world, it's just going to be—_god_, why can't they ever leave the sanitation systems alone? It's going to _smell_." His voices hitches on a little moan, making him sound like a petulant five-year-old—which isn't so far off normal, so John shrugs and takes him at his word—situation normal, shit's all fucked up, and Rodney can go right the universe while John returns to his book.

John's always got half an ear out, listening for his team, so he tracks Rodney halfway across the mess hall, follows him back, and isn't surprised when he looks up a moment later to see Rodney standing at his elbow. Rodney's staring down at him, a squint and a frown on his face. "You already drank all the coffee, McKay," John supplies helpfully. "Cupboard's bare."

"No," Rodney blurts out, "It's just—bootlaces—did you ever—"

John stays looking up at him, waiting to see where _this_ particular conversational tangent is going—you never have to wait long for Rodney to speak—but nothing is forthcoming. Rodney makes a low noise in the back of his throat, the one John associates with frustration, with the things that don't work out just like Rodney wants—the things that remain elusive.

"Nothing," Rodney grits out eventually.

"Ohh-kay," John says, raising both eyebrows, and returning to his book, because there're times when he remembers that Rodney's a whole barrel of crazy. It should be Rodney's signal to leave, to head off to the labs and gain vengeance and righteous indignation in equal measure—but Rodney stays there, hands fidgeting and body vibrating with something repressed—and just before John turns to look at him, to sigh _McKay, what?_, Rodney leans over and presses a kiss to John's temple. His chapped lips brush against John's hair, lingering for the space of one shocked heartbeat.

Then he's gone—fast enough across the room that Ronon would be jealous, and John can only blink down at the pages held open in his hands. His eyes don't register the words on the pages in front of him, because he can think of only three things, three kisses made strange already by memory and association and time: a blessing, given heartfelt and all unknowing when it might just have been the two of them at the end; hope, left at the crease of his palm where John could grasp it tightest; affection offered simply because it could not be held back. Recognition makes his breath catch; makes him realise with wonder the meaning of the smile that's making his cheeks hurt, pulling his heart wide open.


End file.
